


Air Duct Romance (or something much less cliche)

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel
Genre: Clint eats too many donuts, M/M, Phil indulges Clint's caffeine addiction, and Tony is going to need a shock blanket.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2750132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint starts a nest above Phil's office. Endless coffee, far too many donuts, and a couch later and Tony gets the shock of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Air Duct Romance (or something much less cliche)

Clint Barton disappeared after every mission, and no one – no, not even Natasha – knew where he went. When asked, he’d throw out a casual smile and say something about his ‘headspace’ before padding barefoot down the hall to his room (a loft, because Tony is good like that).

There’s a difference between trusting someone to have your back in battle and _really trusting_ someone. And Clint doesn’t trust many people. A lifetime of being fucked over by anyone and everyone had led to a deeply-rooted wariness. ‘Hypervigilance and irrational trust issues’ according to his very official and very much classified SHIELD file, which he wasn’t supposed to have seen but had anyway. He figured if Coulson truly hadn’t wanted him to see it, he wouldn’t have left the drawer it was in unlocked.

~~The fact that said drawer was in Coulson’s secure home office had no bearing on the point. The fact that Phil had merely punched in the code on his security system after giving the room a cursory glance (eyes very pointedly avoiding the ceiling above where he stood) meant everything.~~

Clint trusted Coulson. He hadn’t meant to – in fact, he’d done absolutely everything he could think of to remain at arm’s length from the man – but so many years of hearing that unflappable voice in his ear during missions and sitting across from that unendingly calm face during planning and debriefs meant Clint couldn’t even deny it to himself anymore.

Phil, as he’d taken to mentally addressing the man, was the one person Clint found he could relax around. He never let his guard down (he wasn’t stupid), but the knot in his chest would unclench when he was near. Phil’s ever-calm demeanor was like a sounding board for Clint. He could throw anything at it and Phil wouldn’t so much as flinch.

Which was why he’d taken to nesting in the air ducts above Phil’s office after missions.

Clint fought in a state of mind so intense that coming down from it was something he compared to a subdrop. Without proper aftercare, he’d fall into a bad spot and coming out of it was worse than any hangover or liquid cocktail he’d ever experienced.

So over the course of several weeks, he’d commissioned the necessary items from headquarters. Shock blankets, two pillows, and a camping bed that was shockingly comfortable for being all of an inch thick. He eventually found an opportunity to transfer the materials from his locker to the duct above Phil’s office, and immediately after his debrief with the man a week later following a DoomBot incident in the park, he swung by the mess and grabbed a large coffee and a to go container that he filled with nothing but donuts. He climbed up into the ducts from the men’s bathroom and it was a short and silent jaunt from there to his nest.

He had positioned his bedroll just beside the open vent that looked over Phil’s desk, and when Clint settled in, it was the perfect vantage point. He could hear everything, and he could see enough for the ever-present knot in his chest to relax.

He settled in beneath a blanket and soon fell asleep to the consistent clacking of Phil’s keyboard and the rhythmic sound of his breathing, unconsciously matched by Clint’s own.

Clint woke up feeling refreshed thirteen hours later, and slipped silently back to the Avenger’s tower, where he deftly sidestepped questions as to his recent whereabouts and settled back into his home routine.

The next mission was fine, and Clint merely sat in his perch for a few hours to center himself before heading home. The third one was worse. Destroying DoomBots didn’t incite compassion or sympathy from Clint. Killing a person did. Logically, Clint knew that the man had committed a heinous crime and deserved punishment. But Clint still didn’t like knowing that he was the one to dish out that punishment, all because he was the only one with the aim necessary to deliver a kill shot. He’d refused to come in, and Clint was the last resort. He _hated_ being the last resort.

An hour after the confirmation came in over the line (not that he needed it – he never missed), Clint was back up in his nest. The sound of Phil moving about his office slowly calmed Clint enough that he could doze. He woke up every ten minutes to verify that Phil was still there until he finally slipped into a deep sleep around midnight. Phil was still there when he woke up in the morning, looking no worse for wear for having slept at his desk.

That was when Clint suspected Phil knew he was there.

Three days later found Clint right back in the vents. He moved confidently through the maze of metal only to freeze when his bedroll came into sight. The faint sound of Phil speaking on the phone rose from the office below, and that was the only reason Clint continued moving forward. If this was a trick, at least he wasn’t alone.

There in the center of his pillow sat a box of blueberry Clif bars with a yellow post-it note in familiar handwriting demanding that he ‘ _Eat something other than donuts once in a while’._

Clint, very much bemused, did as he was told. He retaliated by shoving an empty wrapper through the vent and watching it flutter down onto Phil’s desk. The pause in Phil’s phone call could have been mistaken for a lull in conversation, but Clint knew better.

He fell asleep soon after, waking only once when Phil’s phone clattered loudly to the desk. He knew he didn’t make a sound upon waking, but Phil’s voice still offered up a casual apology that couldn’t have been meant for anyone other than him. He settled back in with a faint smile on his face.

Clint dropped a package of donuts off on Phil’s desk the next morning. He got a blank stare for his troubles, but spotted a small smudge of what was clearly powdered sugar on the cuff of Phil’s sleeve later that day.

The gifts continued. Food, all riding the line between snacks and healthy, set on his pillow. Coffee set just to the side of the grate. A novel he’d seen Phil flipping through a few days earlier, which proved to be just boring enough to put him to sleep. Most recently, a pad of post-it notes and a pen, which he took as an invitation to talk.

He peeled his first message off the pad with a quiet sticky _thhhhk_ and let it fall to Phil’s desk where it landed face up. Just two words, _thank you_ , scrawled upon it in the chicken scratch handwriting that Phil oft complained about on mission reports. He watched with some level of trepidation as Phil carefully pressed his forefinger to the top of the note and smoothed over where it stuck fast to the surface of his desk. Phil’s gaze flickered up to the vent and he nodded once before turning back to the paperwork in front of him.

The routine continued for three more months, until the day Clint climbed through the ducts and arrived at the empty space previously occupied by his nest. His breathing picked up and his hands would have trembled if he had been anyone else. And then Phil’s voice rose up from his office.

“Come through, if you would?”

Phil’s voice held the barest trace of nerves, which was ultimately what convinced Clint to drop down from the ceiling. He landed in a crouch behind Phil’s desk and immediately noticed the addition of a couch to the office. He remained silent, and the air between them grew thick with tension.

Finally, Phil gestured towards the couch. “It’s yours whenever you need it. Coffeepot is in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. You provide your own donuts.”

Clint kept quiet, but walked over to the couch, where he spotted his blankets neatly folded on top of his pillows nestled between the wall and the piece of furniture that was most certainly _not_ from the commissary. He glanced over at Phil and arched an eyebrow.

Phil shrugged, the most undignified movement Clint had ever gotten out of him. It seemed as though he wasn’t the only one who relaxed when alone in this office.

Clint stepped back towards the desk and picked up the stack of post-it notes and a pen. He scrawled a note, dropped the pen with a clatter, and set the pad of sticky paper down directly in front of Phil, eyes never leaving his. And then he stepped back and walked out of the office through the door.

When Phil looked down at the note, he allowed a smile to break through the impassive look on his face.

_You brought me the couch from your home office. What am I going to sleep on when I go to your house? Dinner. Tonight, 7 pm. Call me. _

Phil didn’t call, but he did show up at the Avenger’s tower bedecked in a nicer suit than any of them had ever seen him wear. Clint, completely unsurprised, greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and they both left without a backward glance.

JARVIS’ voice cut through the shocked silence. “Sir, I believe you have your answer as to where Mr. Barton has been disappearing to after missions.”

Tony’s voice cracked. “Yeah. Yeah, I got that. Thanks.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Air Duct Romance (or something much less cliche)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3240728) by [VeegiDawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeegiDawn/pseuds/VeegiDawn)




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